The ABD's of Reading: A Program for the Learning-Disabled.

43 Pages·2011·0.84 MB·English

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DOCVNIINT RESUME
CS 004 165
ID 155 647
Williams, Joanna
AUTHOR
'
The ABD's of Reading: A Program for the
TITLE
Learning-Disabled.
Pittsburgh Univ., Pa. Learning Research and
IRSTITUTIOI
Development Center.
NatiOnAl-Inst. of Education (DBES) , Bashington,
SPONS AGENCY
D.C.
Jun 76
PUB DATE
400-75-0049
CONTRACT
42p.; Paper presented at the Conference on Theory and
NOTE
Practice of Beginning Reading Instruction, University
of Pittsburgh, Learning Research and Development
004
Center, June 1976; For related documents see, CS
132-133, CS 004 135, CS 004 137-173, ED 125 315 and
ED 145 399; Parts of document may be marginally.
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*Audiolingual Skills; Auditory Discrimination;
DESCRIPTORS
Auditory Perception; beginning Reading; Decoding
(Reading); *Learning Disabilities; Phoneme Grapheme
Correspondence; *Phonics; Primary Education; *Reading
Instruction; *Reading Programs; Reading Research;
*Remedial Reading
ABSTRACT
skills
An instructional program.that teaches decoding
supplement
to learnifig disabled children was developed to serve as a
result of
to whateer reading program is used in the classroom. As a
begins with
task analysis, the program's instructional sequence
phonemes,
auditory tasks analyzing syllables and short words into
then blending these phonemes into syllables and words. Once
proficiency in these tasks is observed, decoding is taught. The
it does not require tie
program is designed to be cost-effective;
personnel) that reading
sane anount of support (sands and treined
require. (Discussion following
programs in normal school situations
presentation of the paper is included.) (imp
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made
*
Reproductilons supplied by BUS are the best that can be
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4
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The ABD's of Reading:
A Program for the Learning-Disabled
Joanna Williams
Teachers College, Columbia University
Development
Conferences supported by a grant to the Learning Research and
Center from the National Institute of Education (NIE), United States
NIE's Compensatory
Department of Health,. Education, and Welfare, as part of
reflect the
Education Study. The opinions expressed do not necessarily
be inferred.
position or policy of NIE, and no official endorsement should
NIE Contract 1400-75-0049
Conference on the Theory and
This paper was presented at the N.I.E.
Development
Instruction, Learning, Research and
Practice of Beginning Reading
It will appear in L. Resnick
1976.
Center, University of Pittsburgh, June
Hillsdale, New
practice of early rcadinj.
and P. Weaver (Eds.), Theory and
This work was supported
in press.
Jersey, Laurence E-Abaum Associates,
by the U.S. Office of Education.
2
A
This paper describes an instructional program designed to teach
It was developed to serve
decoding skills to learning-disabled children.
reading program is used in the classroom, and
as a supplement to whatever
it will probably be most useful as remedial instruction.
OVERVIEW
auditory
Thd first part of The ABU's of Reading focuses solely on
phonemes
Children learn to analyze syllables and short words into
tasks.
Only after,pro-
and then to blend phonemes into syllables and words.
ficiency in these tasks is reached are letters,introduced, first in the
Then, decoding, is
context of individual letter-sound correspondences.
taught.
task analysis.
This instructional sequence represents the outcome of a
into simpler com-
In this approach, the final criterion task is analyzed
both separately and in integration
ponent skills, which arc then taught
skill is presented
with other component skills before'the complex criterion
The basic psychological processes--attention,
Oagni, 1974; Glaser, 1977 ).
the mastery of the tasks must also
memory, and so on--that are involved in
design (Resnick and Beck,
be identified and considered in the instructional
the
This approach is well-documented and rather widely accepted at
1976).
discussion here.
present time, and it needs no
that
One major difference between this program and other pcmgrams
beginning of instruction,
teach beginning decoding skills is that, at the very
taught in
certain component tasks are introduced that are not usually
Classroom observation
isolation: auditory analysis and auditory blending.
conclusior that a sharper
and a review of the literature led us to the
than provided elsewhere could he
focus on these particular auditory skills
370
4
380
child--a population not often considered
of value to.the learning-disabled
explicitly until recently.
will
goal is to develop a product that
It should be noted that our
Classes of learning-disabled
school situation.
be useful in the normal
but
pupils than do regular classrooms;
children usually contain fewer
these are
ten children per class, and
this still means at least eight or
distractable or otherwise difficult to
children who are hyperactive,
Many learning-
They are not often able to work independently.
0 manage.
aide, but
by a teacher and a teacher's
disabled classrooms arc staffed
resulted in the elimi-
this; recent budget cuts have
one cannot count on
4
cost-effectiveness,
Because we were concerned about
nation of many aides.
instruction, even though that
work toward individualized
we decided not to
suitable for small
We chose to develop materials
is highly effective.
learning-disabled class-
Much of the instruction in
instruction.
group
in terms of both instruc-
and it appears to work well
rooms is of that type,
availability of an
We did not assume the
tion and classroom management.
themselves as
We also have kept the materials
aide to help instruct.
with actual instructional requirements.
inexpensive as possible consonant
is so
used because full color production
For example, color cues are not
expensive.
chieving cost-effectiveness: to
We had another aim in addition to
We rejected
teachers would accept and use.
develop a set of materials that
"selling" of a point of view or even ex-
the necessity of any extensive
We also rejected the notion that
tensive teacher-training procedures.
Xo matter
of time preparing lessons.
teachers should spend a large amount
approach, they
be about an instructional
how enthusiastic teachers may
381
We
elaborate preparation for class.
simply do not haVe the time to do
Teachers
is complete and self-contained.
have developed a program which
continue without
place where they left off and
at the
can-pick it up
wurkingwith a small
Moreover, while a teacher is
previous preparation.
instruction.
should concentrate totally on his/her
group of children, he/she
etc. so that the teacher is not
Thus we provide word lists, examples,
of his/her pupils.
distracted from the performance
that is effective during
The goal, then, is not to develop a program
(funds
is a large amount of support
development and evaluation when there
Rather, our goal is to develop a
and trained personn1t) available.
in the nor-
itself, without such resources, for
program that can stand by
such supports.
mal school situation there are no
THE LEARNING-DISABLED CHILD
A
1
in a regular school
Theie are many children who cannot make progress
have the intellectual capacity to
situation even though they presumably
emotional problems, or
Nor do 4hey have physical handicaps,
do so.
deprivation.
suffered any educational or cultural
sensory loss; nor have they
have potential for achievement but neverthe-
In other words, they appear to
Until only recently, such
achievement.
less do not demonstrate adequate
of "brain-injury" or "minimal
children were often characterized in terms
due to some
The notion that the difficujty was
cerebral dysfunction ".,
1947)
system (Strauss and Lehtincn,
sort of damage to the central nervous
evidence of neurological impairment.
rarely could be corroborated with actual
disability" acknowledges the fact that we do not
The newer term "learning-
difficulties.
know the reason for these children's
They
wide variety of problems.
These children may demonstrate any of a
5
6382
school subjects, or they may demonstrate
may show poor performance in several
Their aptitude
in only one area, such as reading.
more specific disability
performance among subtests with a sub-
test scores are likely to show uneven
They may be
performance abilities.
stantial difference between verbal and
-
.
perception, conceptuali-
impaired in one or several of the following areas:
impulse, or motor function
zation, language, memory and control of, attention,
(1976) considers that a basic problem
Ross
(Hallahan and Kauffman, 1976).
children is a difficulty in sus-
shared by many if not all learning-disabled
-
that leads
It is this difficulty, he claims,
taining selective attention.
of this type of child--perseveration,
to other problems characteristic
school
and poor memory, which in turn lead to inadequate
distractability
perforMance.
trouble learning to
Although not all learning-disabled children have
of difficulty for many of
read, this area does represent an important source
'have
categorized; they may
Disabled readers are them.-31ves not easily
them.
reading is based. They may
difficulty in any or all of,the areas on which
or memory and
discrimination
exhibit disorders in visual and auditory
integration of auditory a'OPvisual perception
sequencing, as well as in the
of
Vellutino (1974) has discussed the myejad patterns
(Samuels, 1973).
reversals and.transpositions, adding
error on reading tasks that occur:
with
syllables, substituting one word for another
or dropping of phonemes or
inability to blend
confusing similar letter sounds, and/or
a similar meaning,
that any
These are the same mistakes, or course,
and analyze word parts.
normally-achieving child
evil/Pi:ally
beginning reader might make; but the
the disabled reader persists.
ceases to make them, whereas
that one particular teaching
Jt is certainly unrealistic to expect
6
383
maximally
approach or one specific set of instructional materials will be
"learning-
effective with the wide variety of children classified as
It seems likely that some
disaled" or even as "reading - disabled".
further differentiation of types of children within this overall classi-
tication trill have to be made before we can confidently make judgments
individual child.
about the specific educational approach to take with an
in mind.
Indeed, a great deal of research has been done with just this goal
It is not easy to
Not too much progress has been made, unfortunately.
another
find instances in which one instructional method is superior ti-
for another
for one group of children and_a second is superior to the first
Ni
1977).
group of children (Cronbach and Snow,
nteractions in the arca of
Most of the search for such disordinal
attempts
That is
reading instruction has focused on the issue of modality.
oriented" (they have
have been made to characterize children as either "eye
(they have
trouble with tasks involving auditory analysis) or "car oriented"
for
Wepman (1968),
trouble with visual perceptual tasks).
that some
example, proposed that all early learning is modality-bound and
Children have a discrepancy in the ease with which they can process and
There is, however,
store information received through the eyes and ears.
that different reading approaches
no sound empirical foundation for the notion
characterized in these ways.
are differentially effective for children
requires
Most studies have compared some variety of whole word approach, which
Neither classroom.
little analysis of sounds, with a phonics approach.
studies (Bateman, 196$ Robinson, 1972) nor laboratory analogues (Breninks,
1970 ; Ringler and Smith, 1973 ) have come up with convincing findings.
identified as
It shntld also be pointed out that in these studies children
7
384
OS.
lg- 20% of the sample.
visilms and audiles together comprise only about
that matching instructional
It would probably he unwise to argue
be shown to enhance learning.
treatment to diagnostic category will never
methods of teaching reading
It may even be true that there arc special
But
specific types of children.
which will work most effectively with
develop curriculum materials with such
we have no evidence now, and to
is not reasonable.
a focus at'the present time
RATIONALE
THE PROGRAM
simple, char
Slow learners, including the learning-disabled, need
and
They do well with a structured approach,
and direct instruction.
with each step made
the material should be presented at a slow pace
They
practice.
carefully explicit and with sufficient opportunity for
and ample feed-
should be active participants inthe instructional process,
They should be kept
back should be provided about their performance.
These general principles
motivated to achieve.
that
will say, parenthetically,
need not be defended here (although I
principles is not always easy!).
the effective implementation of these
It
instruction.
Decoding is the central task of beginning reading
relationshipsbetieen spoken language
consists of learning the fundamental
grapheme-phoneme correspon-
and written language, i.e., the mapping of the
liability to isolate
The ability to decode, then, implies both
dences.
blend individual pho-
up a word and the ability to
thatliMke
the phonemes
the
The development of these abilities requires
nemes into whole words.
strategies (Vernon, 1957; Resnick and Beck, 1976).
use of complex conceptual
and to some extent in
In the wholp-word (sight) method of instruction,
in analysis of a word
4
linguistics methods, there is no direct instruction
r
385
children can do this
its component sounds. Not all
(.1- word part into
<2,
children will succeed with
do their own; some
inductive analysis
Those 016 do not succeed
while others will not.
this type of instruction
this sort
in reading, because for them,
often do not make much progress
specific words
rote-learning of a large number of
of instruction requires
oac's rote
there is, after all, a limit to
and letter patterns, and
have shown that the acoustic
Moreover, Liberman et al. (1967)
memory.
word
modified by the other phonemes in a
characteristics of a phoneme are
phonemes in a word occur
the cues for recognizing the
or syllable and that
Thus, the component sounds of a
sequentially.
simultaneously as well as
of the
(e.g., "c-a-t") arc not actually segments
word as we sound it out
desirability of
abstraction. For these-reasons, the
spoken word; blending is an
learning-
in analysis-and blending to the
giving direct, explicit instruction
disabled child seemed obvious to us.
proficiency
in beginning reading is related to
It is clear that progress
of the
be identified as components
in those auditory skills that can
correlational evidence,
Much of the literature is based on
decoding process.
example, found significant differences
Monroe (1932), for
to be sure.
in both
reading-disabilities and younger controls
between children with
associations.
acquisition of auditory-visual
auditory discrimination and the
readiness or
of auditory tasks and reading
Relationships between a variety
demonstrated over
reading achievement have been
first and second grade
More
1966).
Harrington and Durrell, 1955; Dykstra,
and over again (e.g.,
blending and
the specific abilities of
recently, the importance of
1967).
emphasized (Elkonin, 1963; MacGinitie,
segmentation has also been
tasks and either
boon found between these
Substantial correlations have
1
9.